2011 Production Summit

Karen Raz on October 3, 2011 - 5:04pm

The Visual Effects Society (VES) hosted the 2011 Production Summit at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills this past Saturday, October 1. The event drew around 250 people with a host of panels and speakers exploring visual effects production trends in the global marketplace. We were able to attend part of the day’s talks and arrived during a short break, just in time to get caught up with lots of familiar faces; many RazPR clients, journalists and industry friends. Attendees were soon ushered into a presentation led by featured speaker and Autodesk fellow, Tom Wujec (his name might sound familiar because of his widely circulated TED talk that explores team building via the ‘marshmallow problem’ exercise). Wujec was an inspiring speaker who talked about many things; among them, how technology impacts progress and creativity. Afterwards Mike Romey of Zoic Studios presented a short talk about how various solutions from AJA help provide unique production shortcuts in Zoic’s workflow, followed by a sunny lunch on the hotel terrace.

Afterwards M&E industry analyst Tony Wible candidly shared his insights on trends in media consumption and how he believes the entertainment industry will be affected. Following Wibble's presentation, Chris De Faria of Warner Bros moderated the “Success Around the Globe” panel that included Dan Glass of Method Studios, Thilo Kuther of Pixomondo, Christian Roberton of MPC and Stephan Trojansky of Scanline VFX. De Faria led a lively discussion among this team that represented several of the go-to companies that he routinely taps for VFX on WB’s films. They provided an inside look at how each of these global companies manage the operational challenges of working across geographies, cultures and time zones. All of the panelists had impressive global reach with multiple facilities around the world, though Pixomondo took the lead with ELEVEN facilities across Berlin, Stuttgart, Franfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Burbank, London and Toronto.